I watch my father struggle with his mind. And then I hike up the dress, pull out the knife tied to my thigh, get behind Faye, and pull her head back, like I did with Thorne. “I have her,” I say to my father. I feel the heat of Beck’s body just behind me. We have her together. And my father steps back, and turns the weapon on my mother.
“It is a terrible thing,” he says to me, eyes on Lian, “when your love comes for the wrong person. Reddix understood. But it is even more terrible, when the woman you can never forget to love … is evil.”
Lian Archiva stands perfectly still. And I see a real emotion cross her face. For the first time in my life. And it’s shock.
“All those years,” my father says. “Adam. The children she condemned. Experimented on. You. And I hated her. And I could not stop feeling love for her. It’s untenable, this life.”
Which is what Reddix said to me when I was sleeping. “Daddy,” I say. Faye squirms and I adjust the knife edge. She goes still. “You don’t have to be Knowing. I Know how to make you stop.”
“An absence of Knowing is not Forgetting, Samara. And we cannot Forget … ”
“Stop this!” snaps my mother. It’s a jolt, seeing her true anger. “Your lack of vision sickens me.” Her gaze falls on me like a storm. “Your Judgment has been pronounced. You are condemned. And coming here today changes nothing … ”
She takes a step toward me, and then cries out, her hand jumping up to her face. Blood wells through her fingers. My father has just cut her cheek from ear to chin. With a beam of light.
I feel Beckett beside me now. “The Forgetting is coming,” I tell him. “With the sunrise. It’s the trees, sporing when the sky turns white. That’s why they abandoned the city.”
He looks at the sky. “How long?”
“Moments.”
“What is this all about?” says Faye. But it really doesn’t matter if she knows or not. She’s trapped here.
“Darling,” says my mother. It’s horrible to see her smile when she has blood in her mouth. “You do not understand. You will not be Forgetting. Only he will … ”
“You’re short on some Knowing, Mother. Because that’s not how immunity works. You never read the missing three pages.”
I see her blanch at that.
“I have her,” says my father, turning the weapon to Faye. “Go, Samara.” He flicks his dark eyes to Beckett and nods. “Both of you.”
But as soon as I step away from Faye, something whizzes past me into the rubble. Beckett grabs me by the waist, moves me to one side as a small, contained puff of an explosion turns the stones where I was standing into dust. Two more whizzing noises and we run for the bike. This time it hits the rocks where Jane Chemist and Martina Tutor sit with their eyes closed, still caching, and after the puff noise, they just … aren’t anymore. Only tissue and blood.
“Stop!” Commander Faye roars. “Do you know how much they were worth?”
“Get on the bike, Sam!” yells Beckett.
Mother is staring at where Martina and Jane used to be, and Thorne is on his feet now. “What does she mean, Lian, that immunity doesn’t work that way?”
“You can’t Forget,” I yell at him. At all of them. “But the spores are going to kill you instead. That’s what the experiments of Janis Atan showed, and I don’t think it’s a very nice way to die. It’s a shame you closed the Archives, Mother. Or you would Know that.”
“Sam!” Beck says. “Are you immune?”
I nod once before turning to my father. “You Know it, too. Don’t you, Daddy?”
“Yes, daughter. Reddix showed me.”
“Get on this bike!” Beck shouts.
My mother’s eyes go wide, and she drops her hands. The gash in her perfect face is hideous. She’s having difficulty speaking. “Samara. Take me with you.”
“Daddy,” I say. “Come. You can stop being Knowing. You can heal.”
He smiles at me, and I have a quick flash of memory. Of seeing that smile. When I was first born. “I will never heal,” my father says. He is calm, almost peaceful. “Reddix had his plan, and this is mine. The NWSE will be no more. Even the memory of it. And I will be free of her … ”
“Wait,” says Thorne, Craddock just behind him. “Wait!”
Commander Faye is struggling to her feet. “What is Forgetting?” she screams.
“Samara.” Lian Archiva straightens her back. “I am the Judge of New Canaan. You will take me with you.”
I throw my leg over the air bike and grab Beck’s waist. “You are condemned, Mother. But not by me. You condemned yourself.” The air bike begins to rise. “And there is no forgiveness Underneath.”
We rise, clear the hole, and the bike leans left, dodging one of those whizzing puffs. Someone screams below us. Another small explosion, and there is shouting. Fighting. The first beam of sunlight shoots out between the mountains.
Beck twists the handles and I lean with him, hands clinging to his chest, as the air bike speeds up and away over the Cursed City of Canaan.
Everything I’ve Always Wanted, by Beckett Rodriguez:
1. Find the lost colony of Canaan.
2. Meet someone who lives there.
3. Go out and find a new culture. On my own.
4. Take someone with me.
FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ
Day 9, Year 1
The Lost Canaan Project
I have sunbeams on my arms and Samara’s body against my back. I push for more speed from the air bike and we leave the screams and sounds of implosion behind, climbing higher as the old city and the treetops blur below us. And then the sky breaks. A white, sparkling sky, brighter than any light on the Centauri III.
“Put your face in my back,” I yell at Sam over the rush of the wind. “Don’t breathe!” But from what Reddix said, I know this probably won’t do any good. What was she doing, coming out here when it could’ve killed her? When it still might? I lean forward again and we’re beyond the walls, skirting bare cliff face mirroring the white light, blinding, trying to find the pass between the mountains. She was doing what I would have, I think. I guess we can’t help it. And what are we supposed to do about it?
The answer is simple: Stay together.
“Where are we going?” She’s whispering beneath the wind now, instead of yelling, her breath on my neck.
“Keep your head down!” I’m looking at the panel while I talk, opening up a channel to the Centauri. We’re beyond the mountains, their rocky sides stark in the glare. But those spores could be anywhere.
And then a tentative voice says, “Yes?” through the screen.
“Air bike coming into the nearest port. Close the ventilation systems, and as soon as we’re in, seal the ship … ”
“For three days,” Sam says near my ear. “The spores live for three days … ”
“A quarantine. No outside air for three days. Do you copy that, Centauri?” I can see the ship now, sitting like an oval-shaped city in the middle of a valley. Getting bigger. Closer.
The voice comes back faint through the panel. “So … does anybody know how to do all that?”
“Roger? Is that you?” Roger’s the bug man. What’s he doing on the communications bridge?
“Beck … ” Sam whispers.
“It’s Beckett, right?” Roger says. “Come in. The Centauri’s had a change in ownership. And somebody told me to say copy that.”
“Beck … ” she whispers again, and my heart freezes.
“Are you sick?”